


darling, let's hurt tonight

by chancellor_valdez



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: After the battle, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, probably a fix it because i can't have nice things, this hurt me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 18:50:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18610414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chancellor_valdez/pseuds/chancellor_valdez
Summary: The fighting ends, and she let's herself grieve.





	darling, let's hurt tonight

**Author's Note:**

> hello, i wrote this in the middle of a whole ass breakdown and i still have feelings. braime prayer circle y'all. 
> 
> (title from let's hurt tonight by onerepublic)

The dead came, and they fought. With tooth and nail, sword and fist, and everything in their chests they fought, and then they didn’t. Then it was over and the dead stayed dead.

There was no celebration, they had lost too much for that. There was not a mourning either, they had won too much for that. Instead, there was a silence, a hush that fell over the ashes of Winterfell as they collected the fallen from the battlefield and stitched their own gaping chests back together.

She did not loiter with the rest of them. Her body felt too heavy, her bones felt too fragile, and what was left of her heart shivered. She was not one to sit and stare at faces pulled down by threads of grief sewn into their skin. And so she sought a different type of quiet in her own bed chamber. 

It was cold when she shut the door. Cold and dark and too small and she felt as though she had stepped inside her own ribcage and the walls were made of her bones and she was hollow. 

Her fingers, pale and cracked and bloody, trembled like the branches of the weirwood tree when she finally made to remove her armor. They fumbled numbly at the straps and ties holding it, holding her, together.

But her shoulders were too wide, and her muscles were too strained, and she couldn’t grasp the length of leather with one hand. She pulled and fumbled in growing frustration and when still she could not reach, she broke.

She broke like glass, shattering into a million shards, her insides spilling out around her. 

It was a squire’s duty to help a knight with their armor. It had been Pod’s. But now Pod was dead and she had never felt less like a knight.

He had been proud of her, and she was proud of him, and then the horns sounded and they faced dead men walking and she had failed him. She had failed Pod, her squire, her friend, mayhaps something close to her family as well. 

She failed her soldiers. She failed the Starks. She failed Jaime.

She failed herself. 

She was no knight, she was not the warrior, or the fighter they had all thought her to be, Pod had thought her to be. 

He had fought so bravely. He had been so strong. Swinging his sword at her side the way she had trained him. He lasted longer than most of them, until they retreated into Winterfell and the castle walls washed them in firelight and the world burned.

Then they had taken him and when his soft, brown eyes glowed a strange blue she put Oathkeeper through his chest and let him fall. 

She felt the hot tears sliding down her face, and she was crying, huge heaving sobs that shook her body. Cold hands made of grief and anger and pure hopelessness threatened to strangle her. Her ribs felt like they might shatter and then the walls would crumble and she’d be swallowed by shadows.

 _I’m sorry, Podrick. I’m so sorry,_ she wanted to wail. 

He found her like that, balanced on the corner of her bed, shaking and small. She had never been small, but for that moment.

“Ser Brienne?”

She did not hear his knock or his footsteps, but his voice reached her and he was there, a silhouette of a knight outlined in her doorway. It made her splinter. Ser… What a wonderful joke it had been. What a mockery it felt like now.

She wiped at her face, but every tear she collected was replaced by two more. She could not even find a part of her that cared for him to see her cry. Let him witness her shame. Let him see the knight he made, now unmade and broken before him. Let him know her failure.

He didn’t move, did not approach her and she was momentarily grateful for that distance. 

“Brienne?” The formalities fell away and they were just people. 

She looked at him, standing there. Part of her wished he would see her face and leave her be. The other part wished he would never go. 

His own face was a map of war, bruised and scarred and so very tired that even the light in his eyes felt dark. They had fought the dead back and still they breathed and yet everything still felt so cold. 

“What are you doing?” his voice was soft. Like he was afraid if he spoke too loud she would dissolve between his hands. 

She looked at herself, her pathetic tears and stiff body and the grief she waded in up to her ankles and the overwhelming shadow over the sun and she wanted to choke. 

“I can’t… I can’t take it off… I don’t… Pod,” the words tripped on her tongue and fell from her lips out of order and pulled a fresh sobs with them, but by the look on his face she knew he had understood her. 

“Come here.” 

When she did not move, he crossed room to her and he bent to take her hand in his. His fingers were gentle against her wrist. Gentle in a way had never been afforded to her before, and now in a way she did not deserve. 

And then Jaime Lannister, the disgraced, and once more redeemed, golden knight with a single hand, stood before her, and began undoing the ties at her shoulder himself. All she could do was watch him. 

He was clumsy and slow, his left hand still unsure and fumbling over her body. It took time, time filled with quiet and soaked in too many conflicting and heavy emotions, but then her armor, the armor he had given her so many journeys ago, was at her feet and a separate weight lifted itself from her shoulders.

“I am truly sorry,” he whispered just to her. “About Podrick.”

She nodded when the words failed.

“He fought well. Until the end. Brave, like you taught him.” She knew he meant the words as an embrace, but they felt more like a noose and she shook her head.

If she had taught him well enough he would have been there.

Jaime wiped the tears from her cheeks. His hand felt like fire where it brushed her skin and cupped her jaw and she was afraid she would burn away right there in front of him. 

“He was proud of you, you know that don’t you? He admired you. He loved you, Brienne. It is not your fault. Look at me,” he urged. When she did, she saw the wet way the corners of his own eyes glistened. He had cared about the young squire in his own way. So many had. “He wanted to fight for you. The dead took him, and it is not your fault.”

“He’s gone.” She had to bury her teeth in her bottom lip to keep from crying again. 

He pulled her against him. It was as close as they’d ever been, the most he had ever dared touch her and the most she had ever dared to let him, but in her chest it felt right. It felt like her skin had waited her whole life to be touched and held by him, and so she held him back. 

Their tender and scarred bodies wrapped around each other and they shared their grief. 

“They’re all gone.” 

All of them. Podrick. Tormund. Davos. Dondarrion. The Mormont girl. The Greyjoy boy. Thousands of others she could not even name. All lost and gone and far, far away from them now.

“We’re not.” His lips pressed the words into her neck and they felt like a promise. 

They had lost so much. They had come so far. They were broken people, they would likely always be broken, and a little bit sad, and not quite right, but where others had sacrificed and fallen, the still stood. He was right. They were not gone, not yet. There was still another war to be fought. There were more lives to be given and traded for glory and vengeance.

But they were alive. 

And they were together. 

And she had not lost everything.

“No, we’re not.”

He did not leave her that night. They sat until their worn bodies could no longer hold them up and then they fell back against the stiff mattress. They held each other together, bit by bit, with their tears and with their respect and with their love, even if it was not spoken. They both knew it was there. 

In the press of their palms together. In the way he watched her with tenderness too soft for his face. In the simple smile only he could create. In the lightest brush of his lips at the corner of her mouth as her eyes fell closed. 

They were two shapes fit together, made of the same steel and forged in the same fire. They were twin swords. They were weapons, and they were gifts.

And when the sun tickled the trees and stained the frozen earth gold, he held her, and she him, and they did not let go.


End file.
